Super Bowl Sunday a Dream for Saintsation Christine Hamilton

By Sheila Stroup
The Times-Picayune

For Christine “Chrissy” Hamilton, cheering the Saints on Sunday in Sun Life Stadium still seems like a dream.

“I kept saying, ‘Please pinch me. This doesn’t feel real,'” she says.

The first half of the game went by in a flash.

“I couldn’t believe it was already halftime,” she says. “I didn’t want the game to be half over.”
Hamilton, 23, knew the Super Bowl performance would be her last one as a Saintsation.

Director Lesslee Fitzmorris lets cheerleaders stay on the team a maximum of four years and then launches them “into the real world.”

“I want them to be our leaders of tomorrow,” she says.

She asked Hamilton to stay for a fifth year because her first year as a Saintsation was interrupted by Hurricane Katrina.

“She’s a great role model, a great example of someone who has triumphed over adversity,” Fitzmorris says. “Chrissy lost everything in the storm.”

Hamilton grew up in Chalmette. She was a student at Xavier University College of Pharmacy in New Orleans in August 2005. Her family had moved into their brand new house earlier in the year.

“The storm left 15 feet of water in it,” she says.

Hamilton Enterprises, the 30-year-old family furniture and hardware business her dad and his three brothers ran, flooded, too.

“The store was our life. My mom and dad had never done anything else,” she says “It was such a heart-wrenching time for us.”

When her family evacuated, Hamilton took three days worth of clothes and her Saintsations uniforms with her.

“That was something Lesslee taught us,” she says. “Don’t evacuate without your uniforms.”
Her family stayed in Panama City, Fla., for three months, and Hamilton wasn’t able to get to the Saints games that were played in San Antonio. But she did make it to the game against the New York Giants that was played in Giants stadium on Sept. 19, 2005.

“That was great because a bunch of girls from other NFL teams sent us care packages,” she says. “They gave us underwear, pajamas, tennis shoes, toiletries — all the things we had lost. That really gave us some spirit and uplifted us in such hard times.”

The only other regular game Hamilton made it to that season was the game against the Carolina Panthers that was played at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge.

“It was just such a hard year I didn’t want to go back for my second year,” she says. “But my mom said, ‘Just give it a try.'”

By then, her parents, David and Lisa Hamilton, had come back home to rebuild their home and the family business in Chalmette, and she was back in pharmacy school at Xavier.

She decided to listen to her mom, and she’s thrilled she did.

“I’ve had a blast ever since,” she says. “The Saintsations helped make me the person I am today, and I think Lesslee for that all the time.”

Hamilton says she used to be so shy she was reluctant to put in her own order at McDonalds. Now, she can walk into a room and carry on a conversation with someone she’s never met before. And the once timid young woman is on the cover of the 2010 Saintsations Swimsuit Calendar.

In addition to gaining confidence, she has learned time management, something you need when you’re a full-time college student, work at Walgreen’s in Chalmette, have dance practice three times a week, and make frequent public appearances.

“It’s been a busy year,” she says.

It has also been the best year of her life.

“When I think back to four years ago, when I didn’t what the future would hold, it just seems amazing,” she says.

One highlight of the season was having her sister Brittany, 20, join the Saintsations. Another was the Sept. 3 Saints game against Miami in the Super Dome. It was her birthday, and her boyfriend, Brandon Licciardi, proposed to her in front of 68,000 people.

“It was a complete surprise,” she says. “We’re getting married on April 2, 2011.”

Hamilton will cherish her years as a Saintsation, but she’s looking forward to getting launched into the real world.

She’ll graduate from pharmacy school, a six-year program, in May, and then she’ll have time to plan her wedding. She and Licciardi will live in St. Bernard Parish.

“My fiance is a police officer in St. Bernard Parish, and he’s committed to the parish,” she says. “And we’re both really devoted to our families. We could never leave home.”

A year ago, Hamilton was chosen by her teammates to represent them as part of the cheerleading squad at the 2009 NFL Pro Bowl in Honolulu, and she thought that experience would be hard to top.

“But being at the Super Bowl with the Saints was a hundred times better,” she says. “I can’t even put into words how great it was, but I will remember it for the rest of my life.”